Unseen cultural heritage in Spain: Tradition, art and community

A VILLAGE in southern Spain wants UNESCO intangible heritage status for its pavement chatter on summer evenings – residents parking their chairs outside their front door and having an al fresco chin-wag.

Algar (Cádiz province), has just 1,400 residents, who almost certainly all know each other, but still find plenty to natter about when they pop outside every night – and mayor José Carlos Sánchez says this age-old tradition is 'the opposite of social media'.

It's a respite from the heat, saves energy from not having the air-con on – and not using the internet – hones mental health and, for the elderly, cognitive skills, as they have to make an effort to remember the day's events and can let off steam to each other; combats social isolation, and promotes a community spirit, which is exactly what UNESCO looks for when awarding intangible heritage status for an activity, a craft or an event.

Perhaps Algar is just trying to get its name on the map – in practically every village and every neighbourhood, even in big cities, you'll see local people sitting outside their houses at night having a gossip; not just on the pavement, either: Many a driver has had to slow down in a side-street and politely ask a group of chilled-out senior citizens to move, don't rush, in your own time, sorry to disturb, etc.

But it's working, as Algar not only made national media back in August, attracting visitors and fame from as far away as Madrid and Barcelona, but even had a full article on their intangible heritage bid in The Guardian. 

Of course, chatting in the street doesn't have to be the antithesis to social media. Not everyone is fortunate enough to live in the same town as their friends and family, so for some, the likes of Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Twitter really do keep them close to their loved ones and prevent isolation. But it's good to strike a balance where you're able to.

As you'll have seen from our article on Thursday this week, Spain's UNESCO intangible heritage list includes unique fiestas and shows, but other aspects of centuries-old tradition also make the list.

The thing with intangible heritage is that, by default, you can't see it. If it involves arts or crafts, you can see the result, but the 'heritage' bit is normally the process followed.

Other than the 11 pageants we mentioned earlier, nine other ancient customs make up Spain's UNESCO intangible heritage – here's what they're all about.

Manual limestone manufacturing, Morón de la Frontera, Sevilla province

Once upon a time, and still within living memory, limestone manufacturing – by hand and kiln – was a huge source of employment in Morón de la Frontera and kept the majority of the population in hay and oats for decades, if not centuries.

Along came industrial manufacturing, and machines and conveyor belts took over from human craftspeople; sure, they produced more limestone at a much lower cost, but without the love and pride involved.

Ancient knowledge of the manual, handcrafted methods became lost, rather than being passed down from parents to children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

The Morón Limestone Kilns Cultural Association was set up in the early 2000s to revive the craft, improve working conditions for those who practise it, restore the kilns, and tell the world all about it.

A 'living museum' allows visitors to see the process for themselves, documentaries have been filmed, trade fairs organised, promotional activities outside the town – as far away as Morocco – carried out, and even an Iberian Limestone Congress held.

As well as successfully bringing a dead tradition back to life, the Association's work is at least a small cog in the growing 'sustainable construction' industry, which seeks to cut waste, emissions, water use, and mining for new materials when recycled versions work just as well.

Centre for traditional culture and school museum, Pusol, near Elche (Alicante province)

Think back to your early school days, and imagine if your regular classroom career took place in a museum instead of a grim educational institution with its traditional aroma of boiled cabbage, chalk and cloakrooms. No need for school trips, and escaping tiresome playground games would be easy enough by going poking around the corridors looking at fascinating old artefacts.

You could spend part of lesson time acting as tour guide to visitors, and collecting up historical data which would actually contribute to the museum itself and enrich said visitors' experience with extra information.

Art classes could involve restoration and conservation of local archaeological findings, history lessons might be oral – taking testimonials of living people in your village, asking them questions – and learning fascinating new stories from over 770 already-written transcripts dating back many centuries.

Nobody would be a greater expert on local history and heritage than you, and before you were even old enough to go to high school, you'd already be pretty much qualified as an entry-level museum curator, travel guide, junior archaeologist, art historian...not an easy career to break into as an adult, but with at least another 10 years to go before having to worry about that, you'd have plenty of time to research openings and, even if you decided to go on to become a rocket scientist, engineer, surgeon or hairdresser instead, you'd have found yourself an excellent hobby and made yourself an interesting conversationalist (and a very dateable one, too, probably).

That's how it's worked out for the 500-plus pupils who've been through the museum-school in Pusol, near Elche, between 1968 and 1980, and hundreds more since then as the school's approach has extended to other towns and villages in the area. 

They follow the standard curriculum, too, but it's just way less boring than reciting dates, Kings and Queens, and taking exams, because it's enriched with a working, practical knowledge of local heritage from prehistoric times through to living memory.

Makes you want to go back and be a child again just so you can redo your primary-school education.

La Gomera's 'whistling language', El Silbo (Canary Islands)

Brought back to life for the silver screen at Cannes 2019 by Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu, the 'native' language of this tiny island a short glass-bottomed-boat ride off the shores of Tenerife isn't one you can learn from a textbook, or by sticking post-it notes with handwritten verb tables all over your kitchen. 

If you haven't learnt to whistle, you won't be able to speak it, but you might be able to work out how to understand it – who knew that the annoying noise people make to cheer on their favourite bands, call their dogs or relieve their own stress whilst heightening that of the rest of the household had so many different variants, enough to fill a dictionary of its own?

It's no longer in common use, and of course, was never formally taught when it was, but was passed on down the generations – and although it's not anyone's sole language nowadays, it's still thought to be a joint native 'tongue' for around 22,000 people along with Castilian Spanish; roughly the equivalent of the inhabitants of a medium-sized market town.

Two different whistle-tones are used for the five Spanish vowels (Spanish only has five pure vowel sounds, which is why it's comparatively easy, as a language, to learn; any others are dipthongs, or two or more vowels combined, which are pronounced separately – for example, 'a', as in 'cat', and 'i', as in 'sheet', lumped together as 'ai', give an 'a-ee' sound which, in standard speaking-speed, comes out as an 'eye').

Four other whistle-tones make up the consonants; and if you thought conversation would be limited by only being able to use two vowels and four consonants, that's where volume, 'word-length' and pitch come into play: These alter the meaning of a word or complete sentence.

To ensure it doesn't die out, the Silbo has been taught in schools in La Gomera since 1999, and nowadays, even if they don't use it, practically every single islander understands it.

Many do use it, however, since it's helpful 'shorthand' or oral 'text-message language' which carries across a distance, so you can 'whistle' entire conversations across the street to your mates – helpful in times of social distancing.

In fact, that's where it came from: Given the topography of the island, largely rural and mostly mountainous, it enabled land-workers to communicate with each other from a long way apart, and families to get messages to members out tending the crops several acres away.

The wife (because in the days when it was in full use, gender rôles were different from those of today) could 'message' the husband that the dinner was getting cold and to hurry up indoors, and he could 'message' her back to say that he'd be right there as soon as he'd finished stripping this last banana tree.

(The best bananas in Spain, of course, come from the Canary Islands – smaller, sweeter, softer and a darker yellow than those called bananas in supermarkets and which typically come from the tropics, look out for the ones called plátanos. They're more expensive than bananas, but worth it for the superior flavour; once they start to go black and soggy, dump them in a blender, add a dash of milk and you'll have a delicious smoothie without the need for sugar. Just as an aside, whilst we're on the subject of the Canary Islands).

Irrigation community tribunals, particularly those of Valencia and Murcia

Water-sharing committees across swathes of farmland have been in place in Spain since the time of Al-Andalus, between the ninth and 13th centuries, and today's structure has not evolved greatly since then – seven or eight members, or representatives, of different geographical areas of the agricultural terrain are elected, taking decisions on behalf of and advocating the interests of several hundred or thousand landowners each within a wider area that shares a riverbed or water source.

Even though water may be 'on tap' these days, the sources are the same as centuries ago – bore wells, rivers, aquifers or underground water-pockets, which are used for domestic supply, too – except for newer structures such as desalination plants which extract and purify sea water.

And whilst farming communities may not have to 'share' water supply or 'take turns' to use it, they are generally legally responsible for, or own, the ones they use, so the committee or tribunal presence is as relevant 1,000 years on as it was during the Al-Andalus era.

Two in particular are considered worthy of note, since the procedures their committee meetings follow are based upon the exact same format as the very first of these from the ninth century, such as the ritual followed when announcing verdicts or decisions. 

They also keep their names from those days – the Council of Good Men, in the Region of Murcia, and the Waters Tribunal of the Valencian Allotment.

The latter is an approximate translation of Huerta de Valencia, since a huerta is a small-ish crop-growing terrain, ranging in size from a back garden to a complete farm, although the 'home counties' of the city of Valencia – north, south and west (not 'east', since east of Valencia is the sea) – are known as the Huerta de Valencia and, separately, as the districts of Huerta Sur, Huerta Norte and Huerta Oeste.

These have since become known, officially, by their names in the regional language, valenciano – L'Horta Sud, L'Horta Nord and L'Horta Oest – and encompass many of the largest towns in the province, as well as key commuter towns.

A huge part of the zone known as the Huerta de Valencia, or much of L'Horta Sud, is made up of the massive Albufera salt marshes, a nature reserve, tourist attraction and major rice-growing hub.

The Mediterranean diet

Not specifically a Spanish phenomenon, but Spain certainly plays an integral part and it is listed as one of Spain's 20 Intangible Heritage entries, the Mediterranean diet is not the be-all and end-all of what hits the dining table in south-western Europe, but traditional cuisine in the country's eastern and southern provinces is closely linked to it. 

Fresh fruit and vegetables, nuts and seeds, olive oil, wine, rice – a mostly plant-based diet but with oily fish for protein, the Mediterranean diet as a nutritional concept is thought to be one of the healthiest on earth, but as a cultural concept, goes way beyond grilled swordfish and salad washed down with a glass of red.

It covers farming methods, agricultural animal husbandry, preservation and conservation (ceramic or terracotta pots with muslin lids tied on with string are a tiny part of it), seasonal rituals (recipes and eating habits that change according to what's growing), recipes, local food markets – as a social interaction hub as well as a source of grocery shopping – round-table meals, the social aspect of dining, the inter-cultural exchanges involved in dining, hospitality traditions, festivals and celebrations, the gathering together of people of all ages and social classes in the enjoyment of food, even the highly-Mediterranean custom of communal plates everyone dips into (less likely to be found these days, thanks to the pandemic), and, basically, the complete ritual of human fuel intake in the Mediterranean basin.

Natural and intangible heritage inventory-compiling, Montseny (Barcelona province)

A project focusing mainly on the Montseny Bioreserve and National Park in Catalunya, inventories are compiled by large teams of diverse disciplines specialising in conservation, marine biology, botanical studies, horticulture, history and environmental studies, on elements of popular culture, local history, social history and nature.

Their aim is sustainable development and preservation of the natural environment, and of local heritage, from a standpoint of improving quality of life for current and future generations.

The methodology devised is fairly universal, meaning it can be extrapolated to developing countries, and also to the developed world in countries and regions with a wealth of natural and historical heritage.

Examples might mean documenting locally- or regionally-native plants, trees, or wildlife, studying their living conditions and how they thrive, identifying threats to their survival; studying monuments – famous ones or those nobody notices or even realised were worthy of studying – to check whether they are in a good enough state that they are likely to remain intact, researching their history, their restoration needs, and whether they might be suitable as visitor attractions to help their survival.

Fiestas, performing arts, society rituals, land-based and sea-based industry, or almost anything that makes local culture unique, is catalogued in full, so the at-a-glance information on the resulting databases can help keep them alive and find ways of exploiting them (sustainably, of course) for community benefit, such as job creation.

It's quite a wide scope, hard to pin down with a single definition, but what makes it UNESCO-able is that drawing up these inventories involves a large cross-section of the community, often as volunteers, working together as a team to guarantee the preservation of what is naturally, or historically, theirs.

Dry-stone walling 

Shared with Croatia, France, Italy, Cyprus, Greece, Slovenia and Switzerland, the southern European style of building walls from natural stone without using any other 'sticking material' is different to the type you would find in, say, Scotland, or the Yorkshire Moors, but follow a similar history.

It's a technique largely found in rural regions, generally passed down the generations rather than being taught in colleges or on apprenticeship courses, and at most, might use dry earth as 'glue' between the bricks, but no cement, mortar or similar. 

Dry-stone walls are typically found on steep slopes, in hilly or mountainous areas, but might even be found in town centres – in Spain, for example, the boundaries of an ancient castle in the heart of a city might be made from dry sandstone, or like material.

Farm structures, such as land boundaries, and the steps or bancales you see in the mountains of Spain used for 'staggered' orchards, originally for rural homes, and breaks to hold back landslides, avalanches and coastal erosion are what dry-stone walls are most likely to be used for.

As well as a lengthy tradition practically unchanged from thousands of years ago, dry-stone walling involves careful use of natural resources and provides jobs in remote areas, especially for the young.

Ceramic pottery art in Talavera de la Reina and El Puente del Arzobispo (Toledo province)

Shared with the localities of Puebla and Tlaxcala in México, UNESCO heritage status is proudly held by a central-Spanish town whose official 'Adoptive Daughter' is US actress Gwyneth Paltrow – the star spent long months in Talavera de la Reina improving her Spanish, in which she is fluent, during her student days, and frequently pops back there for a visit.

Both communities, on either side of the pond, hand-make everyday domestic items, decorative items and even architectural features using potters' clay, paint them elaborately and glaze them.

Although pottery and ceramic painting happens everywhere in the world, what's so special about the so-called 'Talavera method', practised by the artisans in Toledo and México, is that their techniques have not changed in the slightest since the 16th century.

They follow an identical process to that of their ancestors, 500 years ago, and the knowledge and skills, theory and hands-on work, materials used and preparation have been handed down – orally, nothing is written and no guidebooks or official courses exist – from parents to children throughout five centuries.

And, amazingly, none of it has ever become distorted, meaning those who were making colourful, painstakingly-decorated ceramics back in 1522 did so in exactly the same way as those who are now doing it in 2022.

Each pottery workshop has its own 'stamp' in terms of specific details of their models, colours, patterns and glazes, meaning anyone with specialist knowledge of Toledo ceramics would be able to tell you precisely which family made them just by looking at them. 

Some carry out the whole process from clay preparation through to glazing, but others specialise purely in the pottery, and others in the painting.

Falconry, or hawking (nationwide and worldwide)

Many parts of the world were already training falcons and hawks back in Ancient times – it's thought to have been a method of hunting devised over 4,000 years ago, and its practice in the Mediaeval era is well documented all over the planet.

Amazingly, despite the almost total absence of inter-continental travel millennia ago – other than migrating communities who took hundreds of years to resettle on different, far-away land masses – the technique of training birds of prey to go out and hunt and then return home with their quarry has been practically identical worldwide and throughout time.

Families pass on the art through the generations, and clubs and schools run formal courses nowadays – and falconry is practised by people of every age, from the youngest children to the very elderly.

For UNESCO, this transmission down the family tree, along with the fact that those who learn hawking also have to know a great deal about caring for birds of prey, breeding, wellbeing, veterinary treatment and conservation, are the factors that qualify this activity as intangible cultural heritage.

Falconry, additionally, guarantees the continuing of these feathered species which may well be in danger of extinction otherwise.

Nowadays, hawkers do not tend to take part in their art for hunting or food-gathering, but merely for its own sake – for the enjoyment of the countryside, and for the very close relationship they form with their beloved birds.

Unsurprisingly, Spain shares its UNESCO intangible heritage status for falconry with 23 other countries on three continents.

In Europe, the practice is recognised as intangible cultural heritage in Belgium, France, Germany, Austria, Croatia, Czechia, Hungary, The Netherlands, Ireland, Italy, Slovakia, Poland and Portugal, as well as Spain.

It is also intangible heritage in Asia, particularly the Middle East – the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, South Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, and Pakistan – and in Africa, in Morocco.